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According to the 2023 edition of the biennial report on Alternative Legal Services Providers published by Thomson Reuters Institute, the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law, and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, the ALSP market has “grown exponentially” and made “great in-roads” with corporate legal departments and law firms. “The market for alternative legal services providers is showing itself to be a highly dynamic part of the overall legal ecosystem and one that is growing at an increasing rate as it forges new paths to serving both traditional law firms and corporate law departments,” says the report, which is based on an online survey of decision-makers at law firms and corporate law departments in the U.S., UK, Canada, the EU and Australia. The maturing ALSP sector now accounts for a whopping $20.6 billion segment of the legal market, and the growth path is accelerating – to a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% from 2019 to 2021 from its already robust 15% CAGR between 2017 and 2019. “Both law firms and in-house counsel are increasingly seeing the value of alternative legal services providers,” says lead report author James W. Jones, a…

Continue Reading ALSPs: Zooming into Hyperdrive

In this piece from Corporate Counsel Business Journal, two academics, Rick Burton, the David B. Falk Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University, and Norm O’Reilly, dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Maine, discuss their book, Business the NHL Way: Lessons from the Fastest Game on Ice. Their goal, O’Reilly says, was to look at the National Hockey League and see what they could learn from a sport that’s had “unbridled business success” and share their insights with the broader business world. “One of the things that makes Norm and me interesting as academicians, and also as authors,” says Burton, “is that we’ve actually lived out in the business world that we write about. Norm is a partner in a thriving agency in Canada called T1, and I was the commissioner of a professional basketball league in Australia as well as the chief marketing officer of the US Olympic Committee for the Beijing Summer Olympics.” That’s why, they say, their work is akin to Moneyball, Michael Lewis’ bestsellers about data analytics and baseball, and allowed them to draw general business lesson from topics such as the permissive stance toward violence on the ice to the…

Continue Reading Lessons from the Bruising Business of Hockey

In this piece, HBR Consulting focuses on two sources, its 2022 Law Department Survey and its Sounding Board series, which reflects data from more than 200 corporations, to conclude that in-house law departments, which had been sanguine about increases in headcount, spending, and tech investment throughout 2022, are far less optimistic heading into the new year.
Continue Reading Reversal of Fortune

What’s the biggest threat to the future growth ambitions of top law firms?

Increased competition from international firms? No.

Attracting and retaining the best talent? No.

Remaining on top of compliance? No.

It’s cyber risk. As in – the accidental leakage of confidential data through email hijacks, phishing attacks and malware.Continue Reading Law Firms Fail to Face Their Biggest Threat

In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, a team of researchers showed that 78% of transformations fail. Their analysis showed that “people are the catalysts of successful transformation.” To move beyond working in silos, incremental improvement, and isolated innovation – to achieve transformation – it’s important to have a structured process to engage leadership in setting objectives and guiding transformational change.
Continue Reading A Methodology for Legal Transformation: Assessing, Aligning & Advancing Your Department